


The Time That Is Given Us

by Eithe



Series: Ameneth Lavellan [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Injury, Permanent Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-03
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-24 12:23:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4919449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eithe/pseuds/Eithe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ameneth wants to understand. Solas wishes he didn't.</p><p>A rewrite of Trespasser's final confrontation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Time That Is Given Us

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from The Fellowship of the Ring:  
> “I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.  
> "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”  
> ― J.R.R. Tolkien
> 
> This owes a very great debt to [ObsidianMichi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ObsidianMichi/pseuds/ObsidianMichi), who lets me babble about Ameneth and tells me wonderful things about Eirwen. I suspect some of Am's yelling is a watered-down version of something Eirwen will say much better, but they're very different people, and I still wanted to post this.

Coming out of the mirror is like being dropped into cold water from a great height – shocking and not a little painful. Between the Eluvians, everything is lighter and easier, comforting and comfortable. Out here, though, she feels every one of her bruises and everything that's worse than bruised. It's strange how heavy a body can feel. Maybe that's why Cole found it so bewildering at first.

The Anchor crackles, an angry tangle of agony around bones it has broken. She snaps a barrier around it. No, she thinks viciously. She doesn't have time for mortal frailty.

Several of the little bones in her hand are broken. The ulna, too, and three fingers. She's surprised the damage isn't worse. The concussive force from the explosions when she couldn't bleed off the power fast enough was bad.

She lifts power away from the mark and shoves it blindly aside, a rolling wave of barely-directed force. Something cracks, and she spins. The motion makes her dizzy. Her vision grays out from the riptide of pain. 

Looming shapes. Threats. A barrier slams into place in front of her before she registers that they aren't moving. Petrified Qunari. That's new. She reaches out with her magic. If this is a temporary effect, she's in trouble, but – no. They're silent all the way down. No hum of life, no aura. Nothing. The residual magic is a low sound that vibrates against her nerves, but it's nothing she recognizes. She takes a moment to study the Qunari. The tableau suggests an ambush. 

That doesn't seem to have worked out for them. Good. Something seems to have gone right today.

She picks her way around the statues and stones. It's slow going. With the desperation and fear finally draining down, she hurts too much to hurry. And then, faint across the field, a voice reaches her ears. The sounds mean nothing, but the voice hooks her behind the sternum and tugs. She stumbles, ungainly and ungraceful around her aches, but she runs.

She'd forgotten his voice. She kept the callouses on his hands, remembered the warmth and scent of him when she tucked her nose in against his neck on snowy evenings, knew the way his eyes scrunched just so when he smiled and meant it, but it's been two years. She'd lost the sound of his voice.

The Viddasala responds, angry and sharp. Qunlat, then. Not meaningless noise.

Possibly the Inquisitor should recognize the language, but it's never been a priority, and it doesn't matter now. Even if by some miracle she lives through all this, she won't be the Inquisitor much longer. Knowing Qunlat will become someone else's problem, either way.

“Your forces have failed. Leave now, and tell the Qunari to trouble me no further.”

It's a clear dismissal. He sounds perfectly calm. Maybe a little annoyed. Bored. He can't expect it to work; to a Qunari, a true believer, that's almost a taunt. The Viddasala clearly agrees. Ameneth gets a clear view just in time to see the Viddasala heft her weapon with a furious cry. Solas is turned away, doesn't move to cast a spell or respond, but his magic tolls imperiously. 

Complex spells have a melody, minor ones sound off as short chords. This is like being on the inside of a great bell when it's struck. The magic doesn't just have a sound, it has a physical presence. A presence that isn't very comfortable, at close range.

When Ameneth shakes off the vibrations, the Viddasala is nothing but dead stone, just like her agents below.

She should be frightened. It is, objectively, frightening. If not frightened, curious, perhaps, or wondering, or wary. She is none of these things. It doesn't matter what he is or what she knows or what he's done. It matters that he is still walking away.

“Solas.”

His name tears out of her. It feels like it damaged something on the way out. It still tastes like love and hope and maybe home, and she doesn't even know if it really is his name.

And oh, stupid, stupid – she hasn't been paying attention, hasn't been mindful and monitoring; the Anchor blazes up and tries to pull her to pieces. She saw him and she forgot, for just a moment, that she's dying. He's always made her a little bit stupid. Some things don't change.

It's deteriorating faster, now. She thought she had more time. Days, maybe weeks; long enough to get back to her clan, first. Maybe some of it is proximity. He always had a curious effect on the mark. Bad luck that now means the Anchor is trying to buck off the mortal flesh that houses it, and succeeding. The mark flares again, and the power shatters the barrier she's been using as a splint.

She really didn't want to scream. Still doesn't, but she can't keep the sound bit back behind her teeth.

There's a curious sort of relief in finally making the animal noises of pain she's been stifling. Her body curls around her arm and the pain pushes her to her knees, but she forces her head up. It means she sees, when his eyes cut away and blaze with silvery light. This is nothing like the stone spell; not a buffeting of raw force. It's as if she's heard this song played on a single instrument and is now hearing the full piece played by an ensemble. There's a delicacy to this. Even under the new layers and complexity, it's familiar. Too many threads to follow, though, and that makes her strangely sad even as relief swamps her. The pain is – not gone, exactly, but held in abeyance.

She pushes to her feet again, and he speaks.

“That should give us more time.” Gentle. Sad. Why? She starts to step forward, but his posture – she's seen him stand like this before. It looks like confidence, as if he is planting his feet and declaring his immovability. On someone she didn't know, she might believe it. Does she know him, though? Is this the truth, and the pensive Dreamer just a mask? When the man she knew was comfortable and secure, he faced her with relaxed posture, open, inviting her to share in the truth. From the man she knew, this would be a barrier. Armor, just as much so as what he is wearing and every bit as artificial. Like armor, meant as protection, to ward off what might bring pain.

Whatever misgivings her head might have, though, her heart doesn't share them. Trusting people she loves has never been a choice. It's just how things are. She is tired and aching, and there is no invitation in his posture, tension across his shoulders and tightness around his eyes. His ears are ever-so-slightly swiveled back, and perhaps she wouldn't notice if she hadn't so often seen him looking relaxed, but the worry in that hurts her heart. Her own dip under the sorrow, and he braces like it presages an attack. It's enough to make up her mind. She walks into his space and tucks her face into the hollow of his throat, settling her undamaged hand at his waist. It's careful. She doesn't cling. If he pulls away, she will not follow.

His arms come forward with startled speed, and she shifts her balance to accommodate being pushed away, but he doesn't. He wraps his arms tight around her and clings hard enough to hurt. She can't help the high noise in her throat when he jostles her arm, but although he loosens his grip at that, he doesn't let go.

He still smells the same, under the cool scent of metal and the strange undercurrents of enchantments she doesn't recognize. She most likely smells like old blood and stale sweat and wet leather and singed everything, but he presses his face into her hair anyway. She is filthy and exhausted and he's holding her like something rare and precious, something he worries will be taken away.

He's been lonely. She presses closer. The quiet moments can prey on a person. Missing him always hit her hardest at night, but then, she rarely allows herself solitude. He's always been protective of his own; maintained a certain distance, even among allies.

“I suspect you have questions,” he says to the top of her head, like a suggestion. She grins, knows he'll feel the mirth trembling through her even though she doesn't voice it.

“I always have questions. I'm reasonably sure you know this about me.”

A little of the tension ebbs out of him when he laughs; it's a short laugh, barely more than a huff of breath, but it does him a world of good.

_What on earth have you been doing to yourself?_

Too vague. And she knows better than to ask how he is; the way he was holding himself said plenty. He's exhausted and hurt, and given the casual display of power earlier, neither of those things can possibly be physical.

“Why did the Viddasala assume I was your puppet? Was it just that you saved my life after the Conclave explosion and led us to Tarasyl'an Tel'as, or was there more than that? Why did she think you were working for yourself? Was Skyhold where you created the Veil?”

It's like she's a child again, so many questions her tongue wants to trip on them, that they spill out like water when she gives them half a chance. She isn't expecting answers to all of them, but instead of responding, he goes rigid and starts to pull away. And then she realizes that, no, those aren't the important part. She tightens her good hand, tugging at his hip to keep him near and get his attention.

“Wait – no. This one, first. What am I to call you?”

She can look into his face, now; he's put some distance between them. He looks like he's expecting anger, a rebuke. That explains a great deal.

It wasn't new knowledge, though, not really. The name is new, the name would never have occurred to her without prompting, but it made sense of so much. It was the moment of clarity and coherence when you look at a puzzle from another angle and the solution is suddenly obvious. And there's humor in it, too: The Dread Wolf likes tiny cakes. He Who Hunts Alone hates tea.

“I was Solas first,” he says, and it's quiet – almost hopeful. She quirks a small smile, meaning it as reassurance. It was true, then. Misleading, but not exactly lying.

She can't pass judgment on him for that. It's not as if she doesn't do the same thing all the time.

“You were more truthful than you probably should have been, then. Although, once I'd worked out 'probably a noble from Elvhenan,' I admit that it didn't occur to me to keep digging.” 

“I was not careful with you,” he admits. “It did not initially occur to me that I would need to be.” Oh. That makes sense. She still remembers stifling her anger to try and find out why he held her people in such contempt. Carelessness, at first. An initial indifference to her well-being and assumption that she would never guess. And maybe, at the end, the lowering of defenses that comes of trust and comfort.

“You called me a mortal in the first conversation we had after Haven was destroyed,” she agrees, and he winces away. A mean little part of her is satisfied by that. She would have a mayfly's lifespan in comparison to his, regardless, but he has spent two years apart from her while she has been actively dying. She loves him, but at the moment all the love in the world would just feed the part of her that has spent two years lost and lonely, the part that wants to hurt him for hurting her first. She takes a deep breath. She doesn't have enough time to spend it being vicious and bitter. That isn't who she wants to be, and it isn't who she wants him to remember.

“And now you know the truth.” The words are heavy, weighted down. “What is the old Dalish curse? May the Dread Wolf take you?”

He looks like it hurts him to say, and given everything she's learned, she can't blame him. She'd almost prefer the bitterness of their early discussions on her people, when he was angry. Now it seems almost as if he thinks their good opinion might be worth having. She touches his cheek, a silent request for him to meet her eyes again. She holds his gaze. Whatever he's afraid to see, she doesn't think he'll find it. She isn't afraid, and she isn't truly angry.

“I know perspectives,” she says, gentle as she can be. This is familiar. She's done this before; _if the Dalish have done you a disservice, I would see that made right_. Little did she know. “I have the stories of my childhood, and the memories of your detractors, preserved at the Vir Dirthara, and the praise recorded by your followers. I would know your truth. Ma ghilani, vhenan.”

He takes a breath, and begins.

“I sought to set my people free from slavery to would-be gods. I broke the chains of all who wished to join me. The false gods called me Fen'Harel, an insult I took as a badge of pride. The Dread Wolf inspired hope in my friends and fear in my enemies – not unlike 'Inquisitor,' I suppose.”

He offers it as a bridge between them, one he isn't sure she'll take. Is he still anticipating anger for the past, or is he about to tell her something terrible?

“I might have some idea what it's like to have people use an epithet rather than your name. And to have detractors paint you as a monster while some allies come uncomfortably close to deification, should it come to that, although you were certainly more ambitious there.”

“I never had any pretensions to godhood.”

Cole said he wanted to give wisdom, not orders. He must have found that pedestal they placed him on terribly lonely.

“No,” she agreed. “But they didn't know you. No one can know every person who touches their lives, especially not those they aren't close to. Abstract the distant and powerful, and you are left with a hero or a villain. Or a god. And you set yourself in opposition to the Evanuris. Those who accepted them as gods would naturally consider anyone who could fight them to be one, as well.” 

She finds the idea of being seen as a symbol comforting, when she lies awake thinking about how many people feel they own a part of her because she saved them. They don't own her. The person they think they own doesn't really exist. 

He doesn't look comforted. Questions, then. They've worked as a distraction before.

“What changed and made the Veil necessary? You love the Fade. Hiding it away could not have been your first choice.”

“Every alternative was worse, and the Evanuris had finally gone too far. Had I not created the Veil to banish them, they would have destroyed the entire world.”

And for beings so powerful, that is likely not hyperbole. Banishment rather than killing – but Mythal did not die, so likely killing them was impractical, if not impossible.

Mythal. She wasn't trapped with the others. She was betrayed. Fen'harel had nothing to do with her murder. The Evanuris went too far. She was the peacekeeper, the adjudicator. They were in danger of destroying the world. Everything seems to slide into place and she rocks back from the picture it suggests. She can't keep the horror out of her voice.

“They killed Mythal.”

They were the only ones who could have. Solas said it took all of them to best Falon'din in his temple. It must have required a similar effort to kill Mythal. 

The stories aren't true, or not all of them. She knows that, she _does_ , but – the Great Protector is also the _All-Mother_. Some legends have Elgar'nan as the father of her children, children who were also part of the pantheon. The idea turns Ameneth's stomach. Her family, maybe, and they killed her.

Ameneth tries to imagine her clan coming to kill her. Cousins, parents, brother, teacher. Her family. 

They wouldn't, not unless they had to stop her, not unless she was demon-ridden and a danger to everyone. They wouldn't sacrifice her. They wouldn't kill her for the sake of their own blind ambition.

The ancient elves were nothing like the Dalish. He's said it over and over.

For once that is a comfort.

The Evanuris murdered Mythal.

“Yes,” he agrees. “She was the best of them. She cared for her people, protected them. She was the voice of reason.”

“And they came to kill her because she was trying to stop... whatever they were doing that was going to destroy the world. But she survived. At least in part.”

She's not quite clear on the specifics of that, and Morrigan hadn't been able to illuminate things. Flemeth was human. But Mythal was part of her, too.

Mortality and immortality are much less clearly defined than she once supposed.

“The first of my people do not die so easily,” 

She can't help flinching a little. If you were to draw concentric circles around her heart, he would be in the nearest one, alongside those who gave her life. She would once have sworn she could never love anything more than her family. She was right, but only just; she cannot love anything more. But she can love as much. By any measure, she would consider him one of her people.

And when he speaks without thinking, she is not one of his.

He's been doing it all along – the artifacts they sought were of _his_ people. He did not consider himself to have much in common with the elves. When he told her about the orb, though, after Haven, it was 'our people.' 

_...dedicated to specific members of our pantheon_ , she remembers, faintly.

“The orb was yours.” It has to have been. “Why did Corypheus have it?”

“My agents allowed the Venatori to locate it. The orb had -”

Allowed. Agents. She laughs shortly. No.

“A degree of separation does not exculpate you, and you know it! You _gave_ your orb to an ancient darkspawn Magister with delusions of godhood. WHY? You fought against beings just like him before you raised the Veil!”

“I was not powerful enough to unlock it. The plan was for the resulting explosion to kill him, after which I would claim the orb.”

Ah. If he knew the process would kill whoever succeeded, his choice actually makes perfect sense. She nods, slowly.

“And then you would have taken out a powerful and malevolent force and advanced your own aims. Two birds with one stone.”

He offers a small half-smile. He'd be much more proud of his own cleverness, she's sure, had it gone according to plan. The smile dies.

“I did not foresee a Tevinter Magister having learned the secret of effective immortality.”

The. Definite article. Intriguing. Not relevant, since she's not going to have time to find a dragon before the Anchor kills her and is viscerally horrified by the idea of taking over someone else's body to prolong her own life – but interesting, all the same.

“And if he had been obliging enough to die, instead?”

“I would have entered the Fade, using the mark you now bear. Then I would have torn down the Veil.”

He says it like it's simple. And clearly his plans have changed; the orb is gone, and attempts at removing the Anchor have been... discouraging. After they nearly blew up the Undercroft, she and Dagna had agreed that further research ought to be theoretical unless they had a really promising lead.

“And now?”

He turns away, and that feels wrong. He walks towards the vast Eluvian atop the hill. She follows. She cannot see his face.

“I lay in dark and dreaming sleep while countless wars and ages passed. I woke still weak a year before I joined you. My people fell for what I did to strike the Evanuris down, but still some hope remains for restoration.”

This is the duty he meant when he told her he had distracted her; she knew even then he was actually talking about himself. It was why she offered to help him find what he was looking for.

Which means there's more to it than simple restoration. He told her she couldn't help. He told her she'd see. She isn't going to like whatever comes next. He sounds grim when he finishes,

“I will save the elven people, even if it means this world must die.”

“Solas,” she says, carefully, “you don't want to do this.”

He doesn't – he can't. He doesn't sound like someone who has made a decision they're proud of. He doesn't even sound like someone who is resigned to doing what they must. He keeps walking. She can't see much under the armor, but the set of his shoulders suggests tension.

“I do not,” he concedes quietly, “but sometimes terrible choices are all that remain.”

It's not the first time she's thought that he's spent too much of his life alone, but it's the first time she's truly realized how differently they see the structure of the world. Solas thinks he's responsible for everyone, because ancient Elvhenan organized people by stacking them. The system itself crushed those at the bottom, and even when he was rebelling, he just wanted to remove the topmost part of a tower of inequality. He saw his position as giving him a responsibility, but didn't question the fundamental rightness of having such a hierarchy. Ameneth has never lived in a world like that. The Dalish are a net, not a tower, and while some people are more vital – a hole in the middle of a net is more of a problem than one near an edge – there is, in every aspect of their lives, an emphasis that things belong to all of them. Including responsibility. A Keeper directs, but a good one never dictates.

He thinks it's his choice alone to make. She has no idea what that must feel like. Even when she's making choices alone, she thinks about what those who look to her need. She was meant for that. She was trained for it. Which is lucky, because she's spent three years as Keeper to half of southern Thedas. Practical experience has taught her that when terrible choices are all you think you have, you find a different approach, or you ask for help, or you change the conditions required for victory. 

If terrible choices are all you have, you _cheat_. 

He has to know that, and he has to know that she will. Which means he's setting her up to oppose him on purpose.

She can't speak the way he does, with magic as well as sound, but she can slip into the cadences, at least.

“And so you say this world must die, that your old world may be restored. If this must be, I wish to hear your reasoning.”

He spins on his heel and stares. It feels, for a moment, like he's looking into her, wonder and startled awe.

It did echo, soft and faint, barely there at all.

Because she's dying, she realizes a heartbeat later. Because she's got one foot in the Fade, and her life is likely measured in hours. That won't be his first thought, though.

A half-smile says she's right, but it doesn't help. The smile fades and he shakes his head.

“You have always shown a thoughtfulness I respected. It would be too easy to tell you too much. I take no joy in this, but the return of my people means the end of yours.”

Which is incredibly vague. Does he imagine they'll all die, when the Fade comes rushing in like a tidal wave? Will any who survive suddenly find themselves immortal mages, like their ancestors were? She almost hopes not; giving a people who have been oppressed all their lives enough power to kill their tormenters and no training whatsoever sounds like a recipe for a mess. A mess, and an awful lot of demons. As for returns...

“Let me see if I've got this right; you intend to fundamentally alter reality again, because that went so well the first time, and release murderous mage-kings who intended to destroy the world before they were imprisoned and whose temperaments have no doubt gotten even _worse_ during two thousand years of confinement.”

“I had plans for the Evanuris.”

'Had.' Meaning they've changed, somehow. And it's only been two years. For an immortal, this isn't just acting quickly and decisively. She's mortal, and even if she did somehow acquire the power to rewrite the laws of reality, she's reasonably sure she'd think about it for more than two years. _What_ , she wonders, _has gone so profoundly awry that you're acting in such haste?_

“I could probably help, if you'd tell me what's going on.”

It's true, as far as it goes. She hasn't actually offered her aid, which he'll probably notice, but he knows her. And she really does want to help, even if she's more interested in helping people survive whatever's coming than helping him light the fire.

It's not that she doesn't understand why he's doubling down on a failed proposition, but she's fairly sure the guilt will kill him if he destroys the world twice. The first time was an accident. This time, he'd be doing it on purpose. He already sounds like he regrets it, and he hasn't done anything irreversible yet.

“I cannot do that to you, vhenan.” As if he would be hurting her, somehow, by doing so. The worry grows.

“You think keeping me in the dark is kinder? That keeping us apart is kinder?”

“I walk the Din'anshiral. There is only death on this journey.” She's hit with the icy, dreadful certainty that whatever his plans are now, he doesn't intend to survive them. Oh, he might live. But this is going to break him. “I would not have you see what I become.”

Anger pins her ears tight to her skull, and she doesn't bother to push them into a more polite attitude.

“You can try to keep me in the dark, but unless I am blind or dead, I am _going_ to see.”

She probably will be dead, but it might make him reconsider. He looks ill, insted. She half-wants to yell, but it won't do any good. She won't feel better. It would gain her nothing. And he's already so sad, but so convinced he's right. She'd be hurting him for nothing.

She sighs, and the brief spark of anger flows out of her. This is why she's always been terrible at fire magic.

“You can't say everyone deserves free will while simultaneously dictating their choices, Solas.”

“It is my fight,” he says. He sounds stubborn, but the set of his mouth is profoundly unhappy.

“Since I am meant not to see your fight occurring, I assume you've come up with something you consider to be _my_ fight, with which I am meant to be conveniently preoccupied while you set the world on its ear.”

“Your Inquisition.” Of course. She stifles a smile. Has he really not heard the rumors already? 

He continues, “In stopping the Dragon's Breath, you have prevented an invasion by Qunari forces. That should give you a few years of relative peace.”

A few years. That gives her a very rough idea of the timetable for his current plans; tearing down the Veil cannot possibly be anything like peaceful.

“You have suggestions for the Inquisition, I take it. Are you going to tell me what you told Sera? To reassign certain people because they are counterproductive and restructure to better-serve my aims?”

“It was sound advice," he protests, stung, and she shrugs. It was, but it was aimed at the wrong person.

“It was predicated on the assumption that her goals are what yours would be, in her place. You'd have been better-served talking to Briala.” Sera wants the existing system, with everyone too afraid of the wrath of her to do anything awful. Briala's goals have always been much more similar to his. Briala would have listened and given his advice consideration, even if she ultimately chose not to make use of it. She wants to change the system. To fix what's broken. Briala and Sera and Solas all live in a world where people are built into towers, but Briala wants her towers to have stairs. It's an interesting solution. Ameneth hopes it works.

Ameneth quite likes Briala. They haven't become friends, exactly, but there is enough respect and admiration on both sides that they might have been, if time and proximity had allowed. Something flashes across Solas's face at the mention of her name, though. _Mythal'enaste._

“What did you do to Briala?”

So help her, if he has acted against one of the best allies Ameneth has had in trying to improve the lot of their people--

“For a time, she controlled part of the Eluvian network.”

“You're the one who took it from her,” she realizes. It was couched in vague hints, carefully worded; Leliana hadn't been sure what to make of the messages she intercepted, had only known Briala's network had suffered some great setback, but Ameneth had gotten a slightly less opaque missive herself. It's less damaging than it might have been if they'd needed to stay two steps ahead of Gaspard to keep him in line, so at least there's that.

She's surprised how personal it feels. Here is someone you love, striking a blow against an ally you admire. She abruptly and viciously hates being Inquisitor, and not just because it is going to kill her.

Solas looks surprised by the venom in her expression. He shouldn't; it's old news.

“Michel de Chevin knew she'd gained control of a network, although I believe he thought it was more extensive than it actually was. He told Leliana what he knew. Briala never told me anything directly, but there were hints in some of her offers of cooperation, when we could manage to coordinate without attracting scrutiny. We can't be publicly friendly, of course, because then people will say Orlais is secretly ruled by a cabal of knife-ears and Celene would rather not have to deal with that twice in a five-year span. Still, it cannot actually shock you to know she has had all the support I could reasonably offer.”

“Shock? No. Let us say, rather, that I am surprised. You've managed to keep it very quiet, even within your own organization.”

“You have spies in the Inquisition.” Of course he does. Half the people she knows are spies or ex-spies or spymasters or send spies to keep an eye on her because they don't think she's eating enough, and that's her _friends_. She rubs her good hand over her face. The guard who found the body and intercepted the gaatlock, obviously. Probably also the surprisingly tall blond elf who was slouching across from the tavern; nobody who grew up malnourished – which is everyone born with pointed ears since the fall of their empire, probably – is that tall.

Solas inclines his head in agreement. “I discovered the Viddasala's plans when Qunari spies in the Inquisition tripped over my spies in the Inquisition.”

And none of them tripped over anyone who was legitimately loyal, apparently. She can't decide if she's more annoyed or horrified by that. It's going to be such a relief when she gets to stop worrying about all of this. Admittedly, there's decent odds that will be because she's dead, but still.

“And you brought it to my attention because you hate the Qun.”

“I would rather those recovering from the Breech be able to do so in relative freedom and comfort.”

“A few years of relative calm until you decide to destroy the world. Thank you for that, I suppose.”

“I hope it gives your people some final peace.”

And that – that is too much to be borne. It's insulting. “ _My people_ have never been at peace. _My people_ have been fighting against the tide since _your people's_ empire fell, and we're still here.” She's proud of them for that. Every elf alive today is the child of those who refused to lie down and die, no matter how much easier it would have been to give up. To the Void with peace. They aren't going to quietly wait for death.

That he makes a distinction between her people and his has always been obvious. What it could be, she has never had any idea. The only difference she's noticed is that they're taller and tend toward arrogant condescension. Abelas calling her a shemlen has continued to rankle even after Mythal told her she did the People proud.

Solas looks surprised, like he didn't expect that to offend her. She narrows her eyes at him.

“You have counted me as one of your people precisely once, and it was done in a bid to manipulate me. You cannot have thought I wouldn't notice.”

He closes his eyes and she realizes that was a direct hit. She wasn't aiming for a tender place, didn't mean it as an attack at all, but she's hurt him. _I wasn't careful with you_ , he said. Oh, she thinks. He regrets it. She still isn't one of his people, however he defines that, but there is something in his treatment of her that he regrets.

“You must understand,” he says, soft and sad and gentle, and she tries to brace herself. “I awoke in a world where the Veil had blocked most people's conscious connection to the Fade.”

The words are almost meaningless; so few of the people in her life have had a conscious connection to the Fade. Keeper Deshana, dim and hazy memories of the grandmother who died when she was small. Meeting so many other mages as part of the Inquisition was unusual and exciting; the only time she'd been around nearly so many before that was at the Arlathvhen when she was seventeen.

But she's never known anyone who went as deep into the Fade as Solas always has. It was a source of wonder; that it could be done at all, how comfortable he was with it. That was normal, she realizes. Perhaps not usual – her people still call him Roamer of the Beyond – but normal.

And then he continues, and she can't think.

“It was like walking through a world of Tranquil.”

Her mind is blank, like a winter-blanketed field, and it sounds similar; nothing but a soft hiss, like snowfall on a silent night. The ground under her feet crisps with frost. She feels perfectly calm, but she can't be; unconscious magic doesn't happen when you're calm. She watches the ice spread and tries to find words again. Her feelings aren't something language can touch; that's why they're seeping out of her as elemental forces. The root cause, though, that's something she can speak.

“We aren't even people to you?” It seems like her voice should shake, but it's as bleak and empty as the inside of her head. Her magic is normally a song, even when it's just curling quiet in her aura. It doesn't sound like anything, right now, but the creak of ice. She breathes, and that goes quiet, too.

She's dimly aware, finally, that she's started shaking. Her eyes are swimming in tears she isn't going to shed, not here, not now, and the moisture burns cold from the way she's dropped the temperature of the air around her.

“You are,” he says, careful but intense. He sounds convinced of it. “You showed me that I was wrong... again.”

She shakes her head, slowly; it feels like coming up out of the water, like a pressure change against her ears. She remembers something Cole said, when she was feeling similarly hollowed out and aching.

“'You're real and it means everyone could be real. It changes everything, but it can't.'”

“Yes.”

And no. It couldn't change everything. That was why he pulled away, after he'd removed the vallaslin and really seen her. That was why he left.

“We were pawns. Tools.” Inanimate. Things, to be used and discarded. She shivers again.

Solas looks as if she's flayed him. He opens his mouth, then shuts it, shakes his head. He picks his way closer, careful of the ice, and reaches out to touch her cheek. It's slow. She could pull away. The look on his face says that if she does, he won't reach out again.

She doesn't move. His gauntlet is skin-warm and feels almost like a brand against her face. She didn't realize how cold she was. She leans into the contact.

Damn him. This would be so much easier to bear if she'd never thought he loved her. If she didn't believe it still. Her good hand comes up and she tangles their fingers together. She loves him, too, even if it's perhaps the most self-destructive thing she's ever done.

“You were people,” he says with conviction. She closes her eyes, finally, and they're too full – it means the tears finally fall. She doesn't care. “You were people, and you deserved better, like all the rest I have used in one hopeless battle after another.”

She opens her eyes again and – he's shown less pain after battle than she sees now. He looks like her hurt makes him bleed.

If he means to convince her his self-appointed duty is paramount, he's failing rather spectacularly. It would be too easy to tell her too much, and he _wants_ to. He won't let her help because having her there would remind him that what he's going to do is wrong, or that the way he's going about it is wrong. He's trying to confess and absolve himself so he can say goodbye, but he isn't actually letting go.

So neither is she. She steps into his space again. The fur is convenient and soft. She isn't going to cry enough to do permanent damage. One arm slides around her waist. The other hand strokes up her back and settles at the base of her neck.

“Ir abelas, vhenan,” he whispers.

She turns a bit, so she isn't mumbling into the pelt, and the necessity is just ridiculous enough to summon a small, shaky smile.

“Tel'abelas. You changed your mind. Not _your_ people, maybe, but people still.” She feels wrung out and exhausted, and everything hurts. It makes sense, after a fashion. And Abelas said the same thing; said it worse, even. She just didn't care the same way. That rejection made her angry. This one felt like stepping forward onto solid ground and finding herself falling. She still feels a little sick and shaky from the shock of it, but at least it wasn't being metaphorically pushed off a cliff. She didn't fall very far.

She can think again, and there is a whirling storm of questions inside her skull. That there is some clear distinction, one none of her people can perceive, is obvious. And it has to be more than height and memory and attitude, has to be more than the span of their years. Curiosity could probably compel her to climb a mountain after having both her legs broken; even though it feels like prodding at a wound, she wants to know.

“You once told me to imagine what the world would be like if magic were a force of nature, like the wind. It was more like light, though, wasn't it? Feeding into senses we don't or can't use, now, giving us a greater understanding of the world.”

His expression twists with grief, and she tries to think of it as if she had done something with the intention of saving her people and had somehow blinded them all in the process. It doesn't work, though. If she'd done that and they'd carried on despite, she'd be impressed. And horrified at herself for somehow managing such a monumental cock-up. But impressed. Her people have adapted to this blindness, if that's what it is. They've never known what it's like to have sight. They don't feel its absence as a lack anymore, even if their ancestors must have. They've changed and learned and survived. They've struggled, yes, but also taken joy where they could.

He finds them lacking, which is annoying but not something she currently wants to argue about. He's taken their perceived shortcomings onto himself as a part of his guilt, though, and that is worth addressing. That pain does not belong to him. That pain does not exist, for most of them. Maybe he needs to hear that.

Cole would be so much better at this, she thinks, with a touch of despair.

“Solas, even if you did manage to blind our entire race, that pain isn't yours to carry. Other people's suffering doesn't belong to you.” Which isn't to say he couldn't try to help, but there are a lot of problems facing the elves that have nothing to do with the loss of magic or immortality.

Which he knows. Which he has actually occasionally made an effort to address, and tacitly encouraged her to address. She's increasingly certain that there's something more going on. Something else has happened that means the Veil needs to come down. Maybe it's old, fraying. Maybe the Breech damaged it beyond mending. Maybe something else entirely is the matter, and his current reticence will mean that she and hers don't find out what until it tries to kill them. Solas doesn't want to do this. He just doesn't think he has a choice.

“And does the suffering of all elves belong to you, when you try to alleviate it?” He sounds nettled again. 

She wishes she didn't find that expression charming. It makes him look more like himself, though, rather than the sad, untouchable ancient he was trying to be when she first arrived. She reaches up to stroke a finger over the annoyed furrow between his brows.

“Well, for one thing, I consider myself to be part of that group, 'all elves.' Other people generally consider me to be, as well. I've imposed my will on things that were unequivocally none of my business a number of times as Inquisitor, but happily, that won't be happening much longer.”

“You intend to disband the Inquisition, still?” He has heard the rumors, then. He just didn't believe them. Maybe not surprising; he's never been shy about condemning organizations, generally or in specific.

“Yes.”

“How can you be content to walk away from everything you've built, knowing it will fall to ruin?”

He's doing that thing, again, where he asks for answers to questions he's been asking himself. She likes that game. He needs better answers than he gives himself, and she can sometimes provide them.

“Because it isn't mine. I may have been involved in building the Inquisition, but it doesn't belong to me. And people aren't obligated to live the way I want just because I saved them two years ago. If Ferelden wants to be responsible for their own well-being, they should be allowed. They do not belong to me. And Orlais intends to come at me with a collar and leash. I don't belong to them, and never will. And,” maybe she shouldn't say this, but it's true. More true than the rest, even, and from what she saw in the Fade at Adamant, she thinks he'll understand better than anyone else. “I want to go back to my family. I don't want to die surrounded by people who think they own me. I'm running out of time, and I want to die with people I love.”

She hates the thought of leaving him alone, hates that he won't be there, hates that in the end, she _will_ be alone, because the Anchor's volatility makes her too dangerous for a proper deathbed. She'll try cutting it off, of course, but it may not work. Dagna had looked terribly apologetic when she said that there were decent odds the magic would get more dangerous, rather than dissipating, once decoupled from Ameneth's own magical aura.

And, as if that thought has summoned it back, the mark crackles, flares, and she loses track of things for a bit. She's vaguely aware of the ground catching her when she falls, but she can't tell which way is down. 

She pries her eyes open with no recollection of having closed them. It seems fitting, in a horrible sort of way. Bookends. Twice at the beginning, before the Inquisition was even formed, and now again, here at the end of things.

He's holding her up, brushing hair out of her face. His eyes shine, not with the wash of power from before, but with a much more mundane gloss that she strongly suspects of being unshed tears. She really doesn't want to make him cry.

“This isn't your fault. I don't blame you. You aren't allowed to blame yourself, either.”

She might get to die with someone she loves beside her, after all. That's kind of nice, if she ignores all the ways she's letting everyone down by failing to survive a little longer.

“Drawing you here gave me a chance to save you, at least for now.” Another handful of years. Astonishing how long that seems, when she thought she had so much less.

“You realize, of course, that I'm going to spend any time you give me trying to prove that you don't have to destroy this world.”

“I will treasure the chance to be wrong once again, vhenan.”

“Then I thank you for the opportunity to help.”

She's still a little vague from the pain, but he's close enough that it's easy to sway forward and kiss him, just a little peck. It's not that different from that first kiss in the Fade. She can't help but smile at the memory.

“Var lath vir suledin.”

“I wish it could.” Stubborn. Of course it can. He loves her and he's asking her to fight for him. He's giving her questions and sending her to seek out answers. He has presented her with a challenge, a puzzle - deliberately, this time. He wants her to solve it.

“It's like you've never seen me properly motivated bef- _ah_!” She's lit up inside with pain. Everything is green-glowing and sharp. That's all she can feel for half a heartbeat, then Solas grabs her hands – both of them, even the one that's made of pain, and she must make a noise but she can't hear it. Then color comes back into the world, slowly. His eyes are ablaze with power, and the mark goes quiet – not just settling back to bide its time, but draining away and leaving nothing in its place.

“My love...”

Her hand is still broken, and she's panting a little with pain when he finally lets go, but the Anchor is gone. His hands come up to cup her face and the next kiss reminds her of the Fade, too; of the second kiss, the one he initiated. But where that was passionate, this is almost desperate. Two years wouldn't explain it. But whatever he's planning, she wouldn't survive it. She's not sure he would, either. She kisses back, tries to slow it, steady it.

_I'm not going anywhere unless you make me._

He pulls back and looks quietly devastated.

“I will never forget you.”

It's a goodbye.

The mark is still crackling with green, but it's burning itself out, now; there are no new surges.

“I will never give up on you.”

She says it quietly. He might not hear her. His steps don't falter.

The Eluvian shimmers shut behind him, going dull and opaque. Her arm still hurts. A lot, actually. It's a different kind of pain, as the cold crackling of the Anchor finally dies away. This is hot and dull, and much worse than she expected, somehow. It shouldn't hurt that much.

She looks down.

She wishes she hadn't done that. Apparently the Anchor's magic was actually holding some things together. That explains the web of green that never quite subsided. She's out of potions – it's why she hadn't treated the break. She can't get the leverage to apply a tourniquet high enough to help. She has to get back down this hill and through the Eluvian, unless it's going to let the others through – and if it would, they'd be here already. 

She doesn't have time for this. She's losing blood. The light dies away entirely. A lot of blood.

Small mercy: For once in her life, she's in exactly the right emotional state to call fire.

\---

It's simple, after, to smile and announce that the Inquisition is being disbanded. She is polite and gracious, not because the Fereldens or Orlesians deserve it, but because it will make it easier for her people – people who have looked to her for guidance and protection, for whom she has been a Keeper in all but name – to go home again with their heads held high. She represents them, when she is Inquisitor, and so as much as she would like to throw the writ at Arl Tegan's contemptuous face, as much as she would like to snarl at Duke Cyril that no human will put her on a leash while there is breath in her body, she doesn't. She smiles.

She walks out with her head held high and her sleeve pinned up. People stare, but they always have. The thing that marked her out as Herald, as Inquisitor, is gone.

Once she takes off the uniform, she could be anyone, and that's liberating. Perhaps her freedom cost more than she wanted, but it did not cost her life, and she is free all the same. Free of Dirthamen's marks and free the magic that was killing her and free of the demands of running a peacekeeping force. Ferelden and Orlais are now officially the purview and problem of their respective monarchies. She is free. She is herself once again.

It doesn't take long to pack. She's been doing it all her life, and she doesn't need the trappings of the Inquisitor any longer. Ameneth Lavellan is not necessarily a simpler person, but she is a much more comfortable person to be.

She once told Varric that she could not be bigger than herself, and it's true, but there have been times she has needed to try. To pretend to be, if she couldn't do it in truth. It has been exhausting.

And now it is done.

Now she is going to chase down her heart, somehow. She is going to learn how to corner someone who can walk across the world in a day, who knows her at least as well as she knows him. Someone who knows she's coming.

She sees him in her dreams at night. At a distance, only, and that's fine – she doesn't know enough, yet, to make the arguments she needs to save him from himself. He doesn't let her speak to him. He lets her sing, though.

It's not enough, but it's something. And she has time.

**Author's Note:**

> A romanced Lavellan gets an extra round of Anchor whump, compared with everyone else (except anyone who attacks Solas and makes him trigger it deliberately). It's obviously not because Solas wants to see them hurt, so I decided proximity (even when he wasn't being Great and Terrible) probably had a case of 'like calls to like' going on that made the Anchor reject its host just that little bit faster. Also I'm a terrible person. Sorry.


End file.
